Abortion Bans Failed in the 19th Century. They'll Also Fail in the 21st.

History provides a window into how abortion bans will play out if re-instituted.
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Over the last year, nine states have passed aggressive anti-abortion measures that aim to restrict access to early abortion procedures. The new bans, which have yet to take effect, are a direct challenge to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which established a woman's right to obtain an abortion without excessive government restriction. 

The wave of new state laws criminalizing the procedure has generated protests from pro-choice advocates and has inflamed an already complicated debate that centers on how to best protect life while also maintaining women's liberty in making reproductive choices. 

Before Roe v. Wade, government prohibition wasn't particularly effective in eliminating the practice. Even after the first state laws criminalizing abortion were passed in the late-nineteenth century, women found ways to obtain the procedure, all while faced with the threat of arrest and prosecution. Upper-class white women were more likely to find relatively safe ways to break the law, while minorities and the poor turned to shady operators, risking infertility and death. 

As with the prohibition of drugs, alcohol, and sex work, a legal ban on abortion wouldn't be effective because a majority of Americans don't believe that the practice should be illegal. 

But they also have an easier time than ever before of not getting pregnant in the first place. One of the biggest changes since the days when abortion first became a crime in the nineteenth century is better birth control. Today wider access to contraception has driven the U.S. abortion rate down to its lowest levels since the passage of Roe v. Wade, and that number could be brought down even further by making the pill available over-the-counter. 

The major lesson of history is that activists should focus on changing individual minds because outlawing a widely accepted practice always leads to more human suffering.

To read full article click (https://reason.com/video/abortion-bans-failed-in-the-19th-century-theyll-also-fail-in-the-21st)

Produced by Alexis Garcia. Camera by Paul Detrick. Archival graphics research by Regan Taylor.

Photo credits: Dan Anderson/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Steve Pellegrino/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Lorie Shaull/Flickr, Library of Congress, U.S. Senate/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Everett Collection/Newscom, National Library of Medicine, AiWire/Newscom. 

Historical Footage: Library of Congress.

"Pine Apple Rag (Scott Joplin piano roll)" by Scott Joplin is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/ScottJoplin/FrogLegsRagtimeEraFavorites/ScottJoplin-08-PineAppleRag1908pianoroll.